This is the last week before most voters will turn down their attention to politics and focus a bit more on family, friends, and the holidays. At least that’s what “normal” people do. 

When they re-engage again in January, we’ll find ourselves in heated primaries with just months to go.  We’ll have competitive battles in both parties to form statewide slates – each with very differing views of how to move Georgia forward. Congress will be locked in mid-terms that will ultimately be a referendum on our current direction.

A gift from the Bill Clinton era, courtesy of James Carville, is a simple gage on how voters will ultimately cast their votes. “It’s the economy, stupid.” An economic development industry publication has issued a warning that elected officials and would-be leaders would be wise to review and sit with for a bit.

Southern Business And Development is a magazine that few retail voters have likely ever heard of.  It’s a publication that tracks new business deals that show which states are getting new jobs via new investments, expansions, and relocations. A report from them, now a couple of months old, crossed my desk this week. It’s worthy of some inspection.

The headline is attention grabbing. “Project activity in the South so far in 2025 has been so disastrous that totals are on track to mark the worst SB&D 100 in its 31-year history by a significant margin.”

The numbers on the surface look a bit concerning. New deal announcements are down across the region. After years of feasting on new automotive plants and the suppliers that will serve them, that industry has been remarkably quiet.  Some announced projects have also been pushed back. 

Rivian’s new plant East of Atlanta finally held a “groundbreaking” ceremony a couple of months ago, but vertical construction for the facility isn’t on target to begin until next year. There was also the kerfuffle with an ICE raid at the Savannah area Hyundai plant – one that resulted in President Trump himself asking the workers to return from Korea.  Hyundai has not only re-committed to the project, but announced the go ahead for the next expansion phase of that project.

The magazine reports 171 new projects announced by August 1^st of this year.  Their 31 year average for that same period is 319 deals.  On the surface, that looks like a major slowdown.  It might be.  It might also be noise.

This has been anything but an “average” year.  In January, we inaugurated a new President. There was clearly a mandate for change, and the new administration wasted little time and spared few areas of prior policy.

Notably, incentives for electric vehicles and other “clean energy” were eliminated, with additional regulations repealed that would have essentially mandated. Automakers that were re-deploying capital based on Biden era rules and perks had to decide if there would still be a return on those new investments.

Then came “Liberation Day”, where punitively high tariffs were announced to force every manufacturer to re-evaluate their entire supply chains.  While the long term goal has been to on-shore foreign made inputs and finished goods, we can definitely see a pause in some decision making as corporations assessed the quickly changing landscape.

Added to the sense of unease are a few closures, with International Paper in Georgia’s coastal region being the largest among them.  This has implications not only for the region’s workforce, but for the entire supply chain of Georgia’s timber industry.

The flip side of this argument is that the data in this report is only for seven months. Given the changes in and from the new administration, it’s not surprising to see a little bit of a pause.  

It’s also important to understand the perspective that announcements are not what ultimately makes weekly paychecks. There’s still a backlog of projects previously announced creating jobs.  The President has also announced deals with major trading partners for other countries to increase U.S. investments, with the South being the most competitive region for new businesses.

It will be interesting to revisit this number in the new year. Was there just a delay due to the uncertainty and changes in the business climate during the first half of the year?  Do the agreements we’ve made since attract new projects? Are relaxed regulations and permanent extension of President Trump’s first term tax cuts a comfort to investors who were on the fence?

Economics lives on real data, but ultimately it’s about direction and perception. How voters feel about the economy once we start the new year will go a long way to decide primaries in the first half of next year, and ultimately the elections less than a year from now. What our businesses are telegraphing over the next few months will be a leading indicator of what those polls are going to show us in May and November.